Good morning.
I would like to thank you for this invitation to appear today.
The Canadian Labour Congress represents 3.2 million workers across Canada. We live and work in every single community in this country, and we have expertise as workers on every single economic sector as well.
In the labour movement, we are concerned for the well-being of our members and their families, of course, but our concern is broader than that. We organize ourselves by a principle of solidarity, and solidarity has brought us directly into the political realm to fight for public health care and other public services, for equality for women, for dignified work, and a welcoming society for immigrants, for good jobs, and a just economic policy here in Canada. We also work to see that our government represents us in creating a just international order.
Last week we were horrified to hear of the death of two Chinese workers at an oilsands project in Alberta. Migrant workers facing the most precarious working and living conditions in the country also face dangerous work and are vulnerable to abuse in many forms.
In solidarity with organized and unorganized workers across the country, the CLC appears before you today to ask you to consider very carefully the implications of the so-called security and prosperity partnership. We ask you to candidly assess this initiative by answering the question: security and prosperity for whom?
As social activists, we in the labour movement usually have our eyes on the laws that are proposed, passed, reformed, or defeated in our respective legislatures. What the SPP reveals is that the government executives in North America are willing to cooperate to avoid legislative and public challenge. Democratic debate and decision-making are making way for privileged corporate access and new rules that undermine sovereignty and human rights.
The SPP, like NAFTA before it, is partially about trade, but more fundamentally it is about changing the role of the state in relation to investment. It has allowed private investors to continue to push for privatization of public services and an expanded role of the market into the public economy. The creation of an integrated and increasingly privatized North American economic bloc is intended to strengthen the position of North American corporations in world order under the economic and security umbrella of the United States.
Our relationship with the United States is certainly about trade. Many of our members depend upon jobs in the traded sector of the economy. We miss an important lesson, however, if we think about economic integration in North America only in terms of trade flows.
The so-called big idea of negotiations leading to a broader trade and investment treaty has fallen out of favour. Rather, in the context of widespread opposition within civil society and among progressive political parties, proponents of ongoing liberalization have moved underground to promote what is known as deeper integration across North America.
Some define deep integration as coordinated actions by governments, intended to eliminate regulations and open up service markets to foreign competition. Others simply call it NAFTA-plus. At its core, the idea is that the more governments harmonize regulations across borders, the deeper economic integration has been achieved.
As the Minister of Industry Canada said recently, he is working, “to ensure that Canada and U.S. regulations are harmonized”. Where this is not possible, Minister Bernier stated, the government will work with industry to recognize regulatory differences and ensure “an attempt be made to soften them”.
The agenda of regulatory reform tells us that NAFTA did not bring absolute free trade into being. There are still ways in which market regulations are subjected to restraint by society. From a neo-liberal point of view, this must be changed, political opposition notwithstanding.
The SPP agenda tells us that the reforms should diminish environmental regulations, speed up food safety and drug approvals, loosen occupational health and safety requirements, and facilitate the rapid production, export, and consumption of energy resources.
Regulatory reform is also meant to impose corporate-defined benchmarks as “best government practices” to govern the provision of public services.
The SPP is about increasing the power of corporations and ongoing deregulation. However, the current project of regulatory reform is also meant to impose a new layer of regulations on workers, citizens, and residents of North America, framed with an anti-terrorism justification. In this sense, then, deep integration is also about re-regulation and a much stronger role for the state.
Since 9/11 Canadian investors with powerful economic interests in closer integration with the United States have refocused their efforts, but now have cloaked them in the language of national security. Regulatory reform appears at one level to be a mundane and routine area of public policy-making, which simply deals with what makes sense. However, it is anything but that.
The SPP is not a signed treaty and has never been brought before the legislatures of North America for discussion and review. It is driven by the executive levels of government in consultation with the business community but excludes the legislatures and parliamentary oversight. It is a process that depends upon working groups within the public service of all three countries but excludes public consultation. The CEOs, however, have unfettered access to this process.
While I could go on at length to talk about the U.S. energy security agenda, I won't do that right now, nor will I talk about the hyper development of the tar sands, which is something I could speak about, but this is something that you might want to refer to in the brief I submitted to the committee.
What I would like to comment on in the last minute I have here is that we're very concerned about the increased harmonization of Canadian and U.S. customs and immigration policies in respect of the security agenda. The SPP provides for an ongoing process of negotiation on the terms of expanded border surveillance infrastructure. Elements of a common trade and security perimeter are being introduced, with implications for sovereignty, and, on the security front, advances are also extremely worrisome in terms of civil liberties.
We need to understand this aspect of the SPP in relation to the impact on workers, especially workers of colour. What are the mechanisms within the SPP to evaluate the relationship between security cooperation and human rights? Who is monitoring the effects of the new security regime on workers of colour and racialized immigrants as well as migrant workers?
Finally, I'd like to conclude by saying that the great tragedy of this new cooperative dynamic between Canada, the United States, and Mexico is that it does nothing to address the most pressing issues of our day. Given the many ways in which governments in North America could cooperate to increase social equality, it's very clear that these areas are not being addressed by this agenda.
Since the Second World War, the United States has drawn Canada ever closer to itself. Canadians, however, have stubbornly taken their leaders to task in the great debate over whether a government should promote an east-west or a north-south economic orientation. Indeed, Canadians and their social movements and their political parties, in many respects, have worked hard to reveal the interests of capitalists hidden behind the invisible hand of the free market. Over the past five years, the institutional racism exerted by the iron fist of the security regime has been revealed as well.
We call for full public hearings and a vote in Parliament on the SPP. We call for abolishment of the North American Competitiveness Council. We would like to see review and study of the implications of further security cooperation with the United States on workers, especially on immigrant workers. We call for the government to abandon any regulatory agenda that leads to the hyper development of the tar sands. We call for the government to abandon any regulatory reform agenda that leads to the downward harmonization of standards. Finally, we call for a process that is open, transparent, and accountable, leading to a North American relationship built on democracy, human rights, and sovereignty.